Seventeen
For a split second today I could smell home. It smelled like sunset on a dirt road. I thought my heart was going to break. The world I left behind was so close I could almost touch it. Everything in me cried out for it. It’s amazing how certain shades of agony have their own beauty. I can’t ever seem to make myself believe that the home I once knew doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s still too real inside my head. I wish I had a handful of dust from back then, so that I could keep it in a bottle and always have it near.
Time has changed for me. I don’t recall exactly when it happened, and I don’t even remember if it was sudden or gradual. Somehow the change just crept up on me like a wolf on tiptoe. Hell, I don’t even remember when I first started to notice it. What I do remember is how when I was a kid every single day seemed to last for an eternity. Time was as long and drawn-out as a politician’s speech. I swear to God that I can remember a single summer day that lasted for several months. I was a sweaty boy with no shirt, sitting on my grandmother’s front porch while the gnats dreamily circled me. The days were so long that my young mind couldn’t conceive of a block of time that would make up an entire week. There had been summer, shorts, crew cuts, and Popsicles ever since the Big Bang, and only a fool thought it would ever end.
Then one day I turned around and realized that entire years were slipping through my hands like water. Youth had been stolen from me while my back was turned. It’s still happening now. It seems like no sooner does the sun rise than it’s already setting again. Now I watch while years flip by like an exhalation, and sometimes I feel panic trying to claw its way up into my throat. Time itself has become a cruel race toward an ash-colored sunset. It opens doorways to disease and leaves me empty-handed. I truly don’t understand how it happened. How it continues to happen. Even looking directly at it doesn’t change anything, no matter what the old people say about watched pots never boiling. Forever can be measured with a ruler, and eternity is no longer than a stiff breeze.
God, I miss the sound of cicadas singing. I used to sit on my front porch and listen to those invisible hordes all screaming in the trees like green lunacy. The only place I hear them now is on television. I’ve seen live newscasts where I could hear them screeching in the background. When I realized what it was I was hearing I nearly fell to my knees, sobbing and screaming a denial to everything I’ve lost, everything that’s been stolen from me. It’s a powerful sound—the sound home would make if it weren’t a silent eternity away from me.
Hearing the cicadas is like being stabbed through the heart with blades of ice. They remind me that life has continued for the world while I’ve been sealed away in a concrete vault. I’ve been awakened on many nights by the feel of rats crawling over my body, but I’ve never heard summer’s green singing. The last time I heard it, I had yet to see my twentieth birthday.
People in places like West Memphis don’t like anything that stands out, including intelligence and beauty. If a woman is smart enough to take care of her body so that she doesn’t become a sexless lump, she will get looks of hatred from the local women. They will cast the evil eye at her as they help themselves to another plate of biscuits and fried pork chops. If a man is a little too intelligent for the taste of the locals, he will soon find himself ostracized. Most don’t have either the self-discipline or the self-respect to better themselves, and they despise anyone who does, because it makes them feel small and inadequate. Unless you want to be the target of resentment you have to keep your head down and shuffle your feet along with the rest of the herd. The one thing above all else that is not tolerated is magick. Any trace of wonder or magick must be snuffed out at all costs. Then instead of mourning its loss, they’ll pat themselves on the back. Nothing can be mundane enough to suit the herd. Bland country faces in bland country places.
When I was a kid, somehow a story started circulating in West Memphis. I can only guess at its origin, but something about it horrified me. In fact, the whole town was pretty on edge. People were claiming to have seen a dog with a man’s head. It was rumored to have escaped from a traveling carnival freak show that had come through the area. A preacher swore that he spotted it looking through a window of his house. Neighbors stood on their lawns in the evening with the same facial expressions they wore when scanning the skies for tornadoes. “Get back in the house,” they would snap at the children who were drawn out by the hovering sense of excitement. I’m certain I wasn’t the only one who began having bad dreams about the dogman.
Eventually people seemed to forget about it, and it faded from the conversations. The feeling never left, though. A vague atmosphere of dread and dangerous fear seemed to hover like a fog for the next decade. It was the sort of fear that robs people of their ability to think clearly. It was the kind of fear that usually ends up with a frightened mob hurting someone.
In this part of the world all shrines are built to honor the great spirit of mediocrity. The celebrations are for mediocre events, and everyone praises a mediocre god. Heads upon pillows dream mediocre dreams and loins all give birth to mediocre offspring. At the end of a pointless life awaits a mediocre death. Love comes wrapped in a bland little package and fulfillment of the biological urge leads to swift decline. There are no monuments to greatness in this land of stupor.
Down here in the deep, dark South we know and live with the real world. Candy-Land idealism is quietly suffocated in the relentless humidity. This is the world where fist meets face. This is where the calluses on a man’s hand are bigger than his conscience, and dreams get drowned in sweat and tears. Mutually assured destruction rides the roads on gun racks in the back windows of pickup trucks. The goodness of human nature gets packed away with childhood toys, and the only third eye I have is the one I use to watch my back. Everyone puts on their Sunday best and pays tribute to religion’s slaughterhouse and then dines on a cannibal communion. People put their backs to the stone in the field and push until their entrails rupture, and they drag their meals from the earth with bleeding hands. Education is foreign to the sunburned beasts of burden, and the painkiller comes in black-labeled Tennessee bottles. No one here moves quickly, but everyone moves with absolute certainty.
Eighteen
My eighteenth birthday, in December 1992, came and went on silent feet. There was no cake, no celebration, no well-wishers. Jack didn’t even remember it, or if he did, he made no mention. I’m certain his hatred of me equaled my disgust with him by this point. Having me in his house was a reminder of his failed relationship and disgrace. At least I was now officially an adult, and outside Jerry Driver’s jurisdiction. As a juvenile officer, he was only allowed to harass children.
Domini’s aunt and uncle had decided to move and were leaving her and her mother behind. Domini’s mother was in extremely poor health. She was diabetic and needed insulin injections, not to mention the fact that the left side of her body was almost completely paralyzed from a stroke. It took her ten minutes to walk the length of a room, and she often needed help getting dressed. Needless to say, the doors of opportunity weren’t exactly banging open for her.
After searching for a place to stay, they located a rapidly disintegrating trailer in Lakeshore. They had procured a van to move their things, but a one-hundred-pound pregnant girl and a half-paralyzed woman proved to be less than adept at the moving process. In the end most of the loading and unloading fell to me, but I didn’t really mind. It gave me a chance to look at all the interesting things they had accumulated—old birdcages, roach clips shaped like snakes, mildewed books, and other assorted treasures they hoarded. They were more than a little worried about how they were going to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, pressures continued to mount with Jack. He constantly accused me of things I hadn’t done, such as having parties and letting people go into his room while he was at work. I didn’t know enough people to put together a party, and there was nothing in his room worth going in there for. He would rant and rave, screaming at me, pressing his f
ace right into mine, but he drew the line at hitting me. I could tell he sometimes wanted to, but he never did.
Late one night I could take it no more. He was bellowing at me as usual and I simply got up and left. I walked out while he was in mid-tirade.
It was dark, cold, and drizzling as I walked up and down the streets of Lakeshore. It must have been winter still because I remember I was wearing a leather jacket at the time. It seems it’s always cold, dark, and drizzling when I go through momentous emotional changes. I used to wear an old black slouch hat, and I liked to watch the rain drip off the brim. It made me feel like a character in a spaghetti western. That’s what I did for a couple of hours before finally going to Domini’s, where I slept that night.
I went and got my things the next day while Jack was at work and brought them back to Domini’s. Between my “crazy check” and the money Domini got from her father, we managed to pay rent and survive. We even started buying a few items for the baby we would soon have. We couldn’t afford a car, so a decent job remained beyond my grasp. I was certain that if I just had a way to get across the bridge to Memphis every day, I could find something good.
Domini quit high school because of the pregnancy, and we spent the days together. We went on walks, watched television, fed the ducks that came to the lake, or kept her mom company while listening to music. We passed the days in this fashion for several months. We talked about what we should do once the baby was born and agreed that we should get married, although we never laid solid plans.
I continued talking to my parents on the phone, and not long after I told them Domini was pregnant, they told me they were moving back to Arkansas. It seemed that things weren’t going so well for them in Oregon. I wasn’t certain how I felt about this, because I knew it meant they’d be back in my life. Could be good, could be bad. Time would tell. They would be back in about a week or so. I told them our address so they could come see us once they were in town.
During those calm, quiet, uneventful months with Domini, I fell prey to the belief that things would never change. It wasn’t that I wanted things to remain that way forever; it just seemed that I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I was wasting away. Ever since I was a child, I’d felt like I was doing nothing but waiting for my special place in life to be revealed to me. Often I was frightened that I’d miss it when it happened. I felt that the stagnant life I was living was not what I was destined for, but I had no idea what to do about it. All I could do was wait, wait, wait. I knew I wasn’t meant to live and die in a trailer park the rest of the world had never even heard of.
* * *
My parents arrived in Arkansas early on a weekday morning in the early spring. Domini and I were still in bed sleeping when my mother and sister knocked at the door and Domini’s mom let them in. I could hear them talking in the living room and figured I’d better get up. If anything, my mother’s southern accent seemed to have deepened while she was away. It was very odd hearing her voice in person again; it made the day seem special somehow, like a holiday.
I deliberately took my time getting dressed and brushing my hair before going into the living room, mostly because I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea how to behave in this situation. When I finally entered the room I saw my mother and sister in chairs; my sister was wide-eyed but silent. My father wasn’t there. I wondered if that meant anything. My mother turned to see me looking at her, then quickly bustled over to hug me. The first thing that struck me was how much I’d grown. I now stood a full head taller than her. While my mother theatrically shed the few requisite tears, I hugged my sister and asked where my father was. He was at their new place, unloading their things. My little brother was with him. He would meet us at my grandmother Doris’s house for breakfast.
Domini and I went with them and listened to tales of their adventures in Oregon on the way. They seemed to be well rested and cheerful despite their weeklong drive. When I first laid eyes on my father I could see something like doubt in his face, as if, like me, he didn’t know what to do. He was nervous and uncertain.
Not having a clue what to say, I hugged him. Domini did the same. That seemed to put him at ease. The awkwardness faded away, and he began behaving like his normal self. The single most familiar thing about my father to me is his cough. He coughed a great deal because of his lifelong smoking habit, and hearing him cough put me at ease for some reason. It softened my heart toward both of my parents. Perhaps because it reminded me that they were only human, subject to the same failings as everyone else. My mother had gotten pregnant with me at the age of fifteen; they were both high school dropouts and had never known any other life.
At least I was capable of knowing there was some other kind of life possible, even if I was having trouble achieving it. They believed that the way they were living was the only kind of life that existed. They had no imagination to envision anything else, and no desire to reach it. I felt sorry for them. I still do sometimes, although that doesn’t mean their constant idiocy isn’t capable of driving me to the brink of madness. They never have learned from their mistakes. It would probably be easier on everyone if I stopped expecting them to.
After they settled into their new place, I began spending time with them. I alternated living with Domini and at my parents’ place. So did Domini sometimes, and Jason was known to stay over, too. One day he laughingly called me a nomad after we made stops at both places, then traveled to my grandmother’s to see what tasty dishes she would serve. Once he mentioned it, I did feel like a bit of a gypsy. I didn’t quarrel with my parents at that point, maybe because I could always escape them.
I was now legally an adult, an expectant father, and in a relationship I was certain would end in marriage. I never would have abandoned Domini. Sometimes I think that comes from sheer determination not to make the same mistakes my father did. But I was not in love.
I thought of Deanna frequently, wondering what had happened. Through sheer coincidence (I use that word but don’t believe there’s any such thing) I found out where Deanna’s family had started attending church. The possibility of seeing her again plagued me. I couldn’t drive it out of my head. I constantly wondered what would happen, how she would react, what I would see in her eyes, and I had a plethora of questions I needed answers to. I couldn’t understand how she had so thoroughly and completely severed our connection. I needed an explanation.
Sunday morning found me preparing to descend into the hellish realm of fundamentalism. From the outside, the church looked like a Kentucky Fried Chicken shack with a steeple. I knew I didn’t belong there, but I had to do it or I would get no rest. Slinking inside, I took a seat on the last bench of the congregation and watched the activity. People obnoxiously called out greetings, shook hands, and slapped one another on the back as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. I saw people glance at me from the corner of their eyes, but no one approached me. No one smiled at me, shook my hand, or slapped me on the back. No one even said hello.
Scanning the rows, I saw Deanna sitting in the dead center of the room with her family. I hadn’t seen her in a year, but she hadn’t changed at all. I’m not sure what it was that I felt, but my heart was in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. She looked at me . . . and looked away. I didn’t see even a flicker of recognition. What did that mean? I had been expecting something—anything—but her eyes passed over me as if I were not even there.
I sat through the entire hour and a half of the red-faced preacher bellowing and beating his fist against the podium, but never heard a word of it. I stared at Deanna’s back, willing her to turn around and give me some sort of reaction, but she never did.
When it was over, I walked outside and stood on the sidewalk. I was trying to figure out what this meant as I watched her family get in their car and drive away. I turned to leave and heard someone call out, “Hey! I want to talk to you for a minute!” The preacher was staring at me without blinking as he approached.
He stood before me with cro
ssed arms, not offering to shake my hand. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to a pin on my jacket. It was the iron cross from the cover of the Guns N’ Roses album Appetite for Destruction. “That some sort of satanic thing?”
I told him it most certainly was not, but he still looked dubious.
“I don’t want you coming here making people uncomfortable.” He looked like he was working himself up into a state of anger.
“Don’t worry, I won’t be back.” I walked away, still trying to figure out what it all meant.
Nineteen
By May, Domini and I had been arguing a little, though nothing serious. It was mostly in the vein of people who have spent too much time together and just need a break. I had slept at my parents’ house for a couple of nights to create some breathing space. One morning I got up and went out to have a nice big bowl of Froot Loops for breakfast. Toucan Sam makes a mean box of cereal. While I was happily munching and contemplating the fact that I would soon have a bowl of pink milk, I flipped on the television. Nothing goes better with Fruit Loops than cartoons. There were no cartoons that day. Every channel was showing the same special news coverage of three murdered kids who had been discovered the day before. The reports all said the same thing: the bodies of three eight-year-old boys had been found mutilated in a wooded area nearby. It looked like every reporter in the world had descended upon West Memphis.
It wasn’t just the people on TV talking about it—the whole town was abuzz. It was the conversation on everyone’s lips, and the rumors were already starting to fly. I heard the same two words countless times over the next month: “Satanists” and “sacrifice.” Each day that passed without a suspect being arrested only increased the talk, as the words cemented themselves more firmly in the minds of every gossipmonger in town.
Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row Page 18